


Recourse

by Readem



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, F/F, F/M, Haruno Sakura-centric, M/M, Third Shinobi War, Time Travel, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Readem/pseuds/Readem
Summary: Exhausted, outnumbered, outgunned, and trapped, Sakura and the remnants of the elemental nations struggle against absolute power. When no one is left to help, a chance to change course opens.When you're at rock bottom, the only place to go is up. Well, through time, and then up.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Jiraiya, Haruno Sakura/Nara Shikamaru, Haruno Sakura/Rock Lee
Comments: 22
Kudos: 201





	1. Battle Ritual

Her arm was sore.

Through the disorientation of sleep, the nagging ache resonated. The feeling of her shoulder, bent beneath her body and bearing the weight of the form above her, finally brought her to full consciousness. As she woke, she twisted, trying to move her hair from her eyes with the motion of her head until she rolled to push the body away.

Reminders of where she was and what had happened slowly came back, even as she sat up and shook out her shoulder, grimy hands reseating her hitai-ate. The white Zetsu that had pinned her in unconsciousness laid limp, mirroring the dozens that littered the area. Though she was whole and hale, the others were not. Even the most intact of the dead had gouges from her chakra scalpels, and burns from the techniques they had perfected for close-range combat.

Around her there was no noise except for the flapping of loose fabric in the wind.

While she wasn’t sure, it couldn’t have been long ago that she had fallen into unconsciousness, because the night of terror had only just begun to lighten into the copper patina of new dawn, sun dripping across the landscape. On the edges of her vision, fields of grass rippled in the breeze, ringing the crater of earth they had created.

Gaining her bearings, Haruno Sakura resigned herself to a few truths:

  1. She had used up far too much chakra in healing herself, with only a pitiable amount resting in her yin seal. She could not do anything more until recovered.
  2. It had, at this point, been at least 48 hours since she had eaten or slept naturally.
  3. She could sense no active chakra signatures.
  4. She had no idea where to go.



The bodies around all seemed to be the white Zetsu, with none bearing the traits of the few remaining fighters that had exited the offshoot of Kamui. Her group had herded the Zetsu out and away from their camp, through the pocket dimension, and out the other side in order to give Naruto and Sasuke more time as they fought Kaguya. But now, without them to open the gate, she would either have to wait or make her way back, whichever way that was.

Sighing, she picked through the bodies, the formless Zetsu naked and useless. She cut their throats clean through with a recovered kunai. If they were somehow resurrected, that would slow them down a bit.

Eventually she found them, one after the other: the comrades who had made it to the end. From scattered nations these shinobi had fought, and nearly made it, only to die as the tide turned. Sakura dragged them together, taking the time to pull them from the carnage, and gently formed them into a line.

Years ago, as a genin and even chunin, she would have refused to loot the dead. As a kunoichi there had been an unspoken code of respect for a fallen foe, and allies moreso. But time and need had changed that. Still, picking through their things was something sacred, and Sakura made sure to say a prayer of thanks over each friend as she leafed through their pockets and packs. Her chosen supplies formed a pile, and she shamelessly stripped out of her bloody, torn clothes and into the mismatched attire of the deceased.

Finally, she came to the end of their unfortunate battle ritual, a final defense of the dead against the monstrous goddess. Normally they would burn the bodies, but she didn’t have the chakra, and with the windy grasslands around them it was definitely a bad idea. Solemnly she paced down the line, saying the names of the dead as she stabbed into their eyes, ruining the sockets and the brain of each, and covering the holes with their hitai-ate. The token resistance of the eye and the scrape of kunai-on-bone was something she had become numb to. Stabbing over and over, she thanked the Sage it wasn’t her, yet a small part of her mind wished that it was.

But she had a job to do.

The sun had risen by the end of her maiming, and with chagrin she counted the hours. If they were separated from Kamui, everyone had agreed to wait three days before changing location, mostly to allow a chakra exhausted person enough time to recover and return. She had lost the last of her Kamui Gate Seals to poor judgement and katon jutsu in their exit, and the others had used theirs weeks ago with no time for Naruto or Sasuke to rest and make more, so waiting it was. She ate some of the scavenged rations and settled down in the camouflage of the grasses, laying half on her field pack, straps loosened so that she could lounge comfortably. As the clouds passed above her, she spared a thought for Shikamaru, laying not twenty meters away, sightless eyes covered by the symbol of their lost village, and her tears distorted the sky.


	2. Dead Seal

Time had crawled.

Resting and mending could only take up so much of the day, and since Sakura had awoken on the battlefield no one had come to distract her from the _waiting_. Two days after she awoke, wildlife started to creep back into the area, unfortunate rabbits becoming supplements to her dwindling supplies. She had separated skin from muscle with a sick sort of pleasure at the dry ripping sounds, thinking of the Rabbit Goddess, before sadly thinking of her own mother and the soft rabbit fur lining of the cloak she had worn in winter. It had been a long time since she had seen her mother.

Unfortunately, waiting meant thinking, and as a distraction from the grief and the loneliness Sakura had used her time wisely, honing weapons and creating exploding tags with the meager supplies she possessed, then sealing away chakra when her reserves finally filled. It felt good to move, too, and she scouted the area, finding only grasslands as far as she dared go.

The quiet was disconcerting, but honestly, this was the most she had been able to rest in months, and she hated how good she felt for it. The subtle tremor in her hands had stopped, and the pressing warmth of her filling yin seal was comforting in a way that reminded her of Tsunade-shishou and her very first lessons in molding medical chakra.

  
  


As dawn filled the sky on her fourth day in the grassland, Sakura let herself truly worry.

The attack had come at the worst possible time, and their group had been taken by surprise. Much of their supplies had been left behind in the crush of white Zetsu, and they were pushed away from the focus point of the anchoring seal Tsurumi-chan and the others had created. Somehow, the Zetsu had known who to target, and where. Now that she thought about it, each person with working Kamui Gate Seals was subsequently targeted, until Sasuke and Naruto ripped open space and dumped them all into the not-dimension.

It was then that they realized Kaguya herself was there, masked within one of the Zetsu. Sasuke had come to blows with it, stabbing forward to be pushed back by the All-Killing Ash Bones of the mad goddess. He had evaded death by the skin of his teeth. Sakura had immediately pulled out her remaining tags, sticky with her own blood, and at a word Shikamaru and Kabuto-san had focused chakra strings to pull the fighters and Zetsu into a tight cluster for transport. As she moved to activate a seal, an aborted katon jutsu from Sasuke flew in their direction, burning her face, hands, and eating the seals in an instant. Instinctively she had pulled yin chakra into and around herself, clutching at the burning paper, before the group was kicked out into their destination and the fighting continued.

Somehow, Kabuto must have been hit by a flying bone shard from the goddess, because his skin had gone grey and chalky, and flew away like ash. He realized that his end was near, even with the healing he was capable of. Sakura and Kabuto had been separated from the rest of the group quickly, the moon the only light on the battlefield. He had lasted surprisingly long until finally succumbing, throwing himself into a glorious death any shinobi would be proud of. Perhaps it even redeemed him, for whatever redemption was worth.

  
  


Three days should have been enough time for her boys to come back to her, or for Kaguya to chase and slaughter her in victory. A stalemate may have resulted in all three dying, but Sakura refused to believe that she may be the last known person alive. It wasn’t a stretch, given the last several years, but she couldn’t entertain the thought in the face of that despair.

It was during these ruminations, pacing the field, that she found something most worrisome: Sasuke’s chokutō, half buried and hidden in the grass.

Reverently she picked up the sword, noting the dead seal on the handle, and felt her hope give out.

Their life on the run had led to some innovations with weapons and sealing, since they weren’t particularly inclined to stop moving to hone or create new weapons. Naruto had come up with the idea, based on the Hiraishin Kunai that his father had used: a chakra-connected seal that would enable the user to easily create a chakra string and draw the weapon back to the owner. As long as a shinobi was connected to their weapon with the Life String Seal, the weapon itself would be connected to their chakra. This prevented damage and blunting of the sealed weapon and allowed channeling of elemental affinities more readily.

For the seal to be blank, Sasuke had to be completely out of chakra, which not even he could survive. Which should be impossible with the sage modes her boys had achieved, especially in the chakra-dense realm they were trapped in… That meant...

He was dead.

Mechanically she hung the sword through a loop on her pack, ignoring where it nicked her leg and drew blood. Without thought the cut healed itself, and she moved. Just walking, blank, she let all thoughts leave her for some sort of disparate heaviness she had never felt before.


	3. Spared

The last thing that Sakura expected to hear was laughter.

For two days she had simply walked, heading roughly East with no more direction than the aim of the sun. When she became tired she simply laid down in the grass. It had rained some that first night, but her mental exhaustion had seen her through to the morning, and she didn’t even shiver at the dampness.

The second day of walking had seen the transition from grassland to forest, and faintly she thought she had actually guessed the right direction of their camp. Not that it mattered anymore. Still she continued on. A vague plan began to form in her mind, to trace back through to Konoha, or what was left, and scavenge the ruins there. Suicide crossed her thoughts, but the idea of ending her life when she had spent so much energy and time surviving… it seemed cheap. And her boys would not have approved.

Then, out of nowhere, female laughter flew through the trees from a moving point in the distance. Her immediate reaction was a leap to the top cover of branches, crouching amid the leaves with Sasuke’s chokutō out and ready. Perhaps Kaguya really had followed.

Twenty minutes of tense silence and waiting only saw the sound become distant, and faintly Sakura felt hopeful. Perhaps the mad goddess hadn’t killed so indiscriminately as they had thought, and people had survived? Deciding to take the bull by the horns she leapt out, hopping forward toward the laughter-turned-voices, recognizing them as two different females. Her senses were sharp as she observed the women - civilians, by their looks - who were carrying baskets full of grasses and herbs, freshly picked.

Their voices drifted as they walked, clearly unconcerned about possible kunoichi watching from the trees, and Sakura allowed herself to enjoy the presence of others. Something in her mind, stressed with her past revelations, relaxed slightly.

“Who do you think will be crowned for the Rebirth Festival this year? Aiko-chan can’t participate because of the baby, and Rio-sama said that the past winners won’t be allowed,” the first girl said, tossing her hair out of her face. Her partner considered for a moment before replying.

“Well, I think it’s obvious that Riku-hime will since she’s finally of age. Saku told me the Nohara family isn’t very excited since Rin-chan isn’t eligible as a kunoichi; she won’t even be coming back from Konohagakure. Since that family is basically all boys they put their hope for hime in Rin-chan and gave up when she left. Her cousin Ame-san won’t be of age for the celebrations for a few years so…”

The girls continued their gossip, but Sakura’s confusion continued to build. Both were dressed in impractical yukata and bore no marks of injury or starvation; indeed there was no sign they had been affected by the calamity, and within that, they had time and energy for a festival!? The second girl had even mentioned Konoha.

What was happening?

She continued to follow, listening to their talk of the festivities. Forty minutes later they entered the outskirts of a moderately-sized civilian village with typical Fire Country-style architecture. As far around as Sakura could sense, there were no active shinobi in the vicinity. The girls plodded through the grass to the main road, dodging clotheslines and a barking dog, chatting until they were ambushed by two young boys who reminded her of Naruto in their excitement. Her chest tightened. Sakura watched them go, following with her eyes until they rounded a home and disappeared. The smell of cooking food and pipe smoke flowed from a barbecue pit where an old man minded a spit, and her stomach growled, reminding Sakura of her self-neglect, but confusion was first on her mind.

Why had these people been spared?

In all of their wandering, especially in the last six months, they had found _no one_. No humans, certainly, for the white Zetsu and their goddess were not human in the least. And now there was a whole village of civilians kept safe?

Sakura tried every kind of genjutsu release she knew, even going so far as to stab herself in the thigh, sealing it with chakra when no difference came. This was real, at least real enough. Definitely not Infinite Tsukuyomi; her perfect world didn’t involve dead friends.

Still, Sakura was a good kunoichi. She would figure this out, and if it was real, help these people set up defenses. Even if her boys had killed the mad goddess, existing out here in the open was asking for trouble. She could have killed everyone in the village by now.

The rest of the afternoon and evening, she circled the area, swapping vantage points in a rotation that let her map the entire place. It was simple, with a cluster of houses around the North and East sides, following a main road with some shops, an inn, and main house that seemed to hold whatever government they had here. The rest of the clearing before the trees was eaten up by extensive gardens, separated by wire and wood, perhaps sorted by family. Definitely not a shinobi outpost. She set a few safeguards in the event this was a trap and she needed a distraction to run, but the longer she watched the more it seemed like… a civilian village. Unless someone was purposefully shrouding their chakra to death-like levels, all of the people except an old woman had no developed chakra. The feel of the woman's chakra indicated she was an elder, maybe a midwife or retired healer, but her pathways were not developed enough to have used it in combat.

Settling down for the night, Sakura felt comfortable enough to eat some rations and actually sleep, though she did so in a tall tree near the blind side of the village, away from the main road. A simple genjutsu trap masked her presence in the leaves and practice kept her glued to the branches as she drifted off to sleep. In the morning, she would use a henge and investigate in person, but for the night, she dreamed of whiskered cheeks, sunshine smiles, and laughter.


	4. The Village

Nervously, she paced the tree line, waiting for an opening.

Sakura hadn’t felt like this in years, notably since she had decided to become a badass instead of a crybaby, and had learned to punch her problems apart with bare fists instead of watching from the sidelines. Now, new anxiety crept through her, thin stomach twisting at the thought of talking to these people, of this sanctuary somehow being real.

If this was a trap, it was working.

Waking hours before dawn, Sakura had decided that she was jumping in with both feet. Waiting and loneliness were two things she was sick of, and it wasn’t like her life could get worse at this point anyway.

A stream ran a short distance from the village, and tracking back had allowed her to rinse her body to the point that she looked like she had escaped a battle, rather than participated in one. Taking stock, she went through her supplies. In total, she carried Sasuke’s chokutō, one set of kunai, fifteen homemade explosive tags, a mostly empty sealing kit, her camp cooking set, a multipurpose tool, some trap wire, four smoke bombs, a canteen, two days’ rations, a packet of herbs for fever, sewing and suturing kit, a limited edition copy of _Icha Icha Reunions_ (courtesy of Naruto), and a change of mismatched clothes. Traveling through the forest had led her to stuff all extra spaces with nuts and berries wrapped in rinsed leaves from the river. She had no currency, so if she needed anything else she would either have to barter services or trade some of her meager supplies in the village.

What bandages she had were used to wrap her chest, seeing as her damaged bra and shirt had been left behind in favor of Shikamaru’s scoop-neck. Other than the black top, she wore some armored mesh which peeked out of her collar and sleeves, leggings which stopped halfway down her calves, standard-issue black shinobi sandals, some plated arm guards, and a grey tunic-like wrap that covered the assorted pouches and straps she had accumulated. Waste not. Her pack she positioned over the tunic, tucked tight to her back. 

More refreshed than she had been in weeks, Sakura sighed. She could admit to herself that she was anxious, though not just because this was possibly a very elaborate trap. If these people rejected her… She didn’t know if she could take that; after being part of a close-knit group for so long she had come to rely on others, which made her solitude all the more hurtful.

As she worried, the sun rose, and her chance appeared in the form of the two young boys whose laughter had reminded her of Naruto.

Nearly identical, they both bore colored markings on their cheeks, familiar in a way she couldn’t name. The shapes were blockier than the ones of the Inuzuka, directed more like Naruto’s whisker scars but thick and colored against their fair skin. As she observed them, they raced each other to one of the farther gardening plots, both carrying watering cans. She kept pace, watching with amusement as they carefully tended a patch of melons, chattering happily about which ones they would eat first.

Stepping out of the trees, Sakura followed a worn path, coming up near the main road. The boys saw her and stopped, something quietly said before one called out to her with a wave.

“Ohayou Gozaimasu! Who are you? Are you going to meet with our Obaa-sama?” Leaving the empty watering cans, the boys tried to look casual as they ran toward her. Sakura was surprised they were immediately so welcoming of a stranger, especially considering the times. But, if they were anything like Naruto, maybe it just couldn’t be helped.

“My name is Sakura,” she smiled, noticing the shorter boy had a missing incisor. “I’m a bit lost and was hoping to get some information. Why would I meet with your grandma?”

“Oh! Obaa-sama is the head of our village! She meets with a lot of people,” toothless replied, “especially ninja; aren’t you a ninja? You’ve got the Konoha symbol!” He and the other boy bounced a bit, excited that they had found a shinobi. “I’m Bumi and this is Ken! We’re brothers but Bumi is older,” toothless - now Ken - pouted. Sakura couldn’t help but like these boys. Sage, but she hoped they weren’t decoys.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Bumi and Ken. I _am_ a ninja, but like I said I’m a bit turned around. Do you think your grandma could help?”

“Yes!” Bumi finally spoke, already turning back toward the road. “It’s market day so she’ll be in the pavilion with visitors - we’ll take you there!” Bumi, apparently even bolder than his brother, grabbed Sakura’s hand and marched off, chattering about their family, the Noharas, and the festival that was coming up. Ken gave as good, interrupting his brother and talking about his sister, who had left a few years ago to attend the shinobi academy in Konohagakure.

A headache formed behind Sakura’s eyes; the more they spoke the more none of this made sense. Had the boys’ family lied to them about the destruction of the city?

“She’s a ninja now like you! A genin!”

“She sends us letters all the time - did you know her jounin sensei is a famous ninja? He’s super cool and smart and fast! Rin-chan says he’s going to be Hokage!”

Rin. There was that name again - the girl who had gone to Konoha. Why was that familiar? Nohara Rin? Sakura didn’t have time to worry about the connection as they reached the main street, market day apparently in full swing as stalls opened and families arrived. She could see straight through to the other end of town, where a few carts were being pulled by oxen, loaded with goods. Enhancing her vision with chakra, she could see people moving even farther down the road, seemingly visiting for the market day.

This all made _no sense_. How were there so many people? Had she traveled behind some warded area? Had Kaguya been messing with them all? Was this part of a modified Tsukuyomi?

The boys let go of her as their grandma came into sight, and they dashed to the woman, talking faster than they could breathe. The old woman listened patiently and then met Sakura’s eyes over their heads.

_She_ was the woman Sakura had felt yesterday, the one with some rudimentary chakra control. As she realized this, the woman reached out with her chakra, brushing up against Sakura, and the girl pushed back gently in the age-old shinobi greeting. Touching energies like this communicated surface feelings and intention, and invoked a sense of trust. As living weapons, this was as close as shinobi could get to proving nonviolent intentions, and once you had felt someone’s chakra it was nearly impossible not to recognize it again if you had any sensing abilities. There were other uses, too: those with precise chakra control could actually siphon off others’ chakra this way, or touch chakras to assess injuries without medical ninjutsu, and more.

“Well I hope my grandsons treated you well, Sakura-san. I am Nohara Rio, but you can call me Rio-sama,” she held out her hand in the civilian tradition as well, and Sakura bowed over it. “Come and sit with me, and we can see about your information problem.”

There was a sense of polite wariness about the old woman’s demeanor, which put Sakura a little more at ease. She had grown to expect a certain degree of mistrust, especially when faced with an army of clones who could imitate any and every person she knew.

Rio and she exchanged pleasantries about the weather, and Sakura expressed polite interest in their festival as Ken brought both of them some tea, reclining on wicker furniture under a simple pavilion. Subtly Sakura extended her chakra in a subtle jutsu. She couldn’t find any trace of poison or debilitant, so she gratefully drank, stomach warm. It was like a vacation from reality. Eventually Sakura broke form in the conversation and asked directly about the nearest shinobi village.

“Well,” Rio-sama considered, “you must be very confused indeed if you don’t realize how close you are to Konoha. You are a kunoichi of that village, are you not?” The woman gave Sakura an eye, specifically her hitai-ate, and poured more tea. “I am willing to help, but please first tell me what brings you here; you must understand that times of war deserve at least a little caution. We _have_ been spared by our location, but I know the techniques shinobi have available. How do I know _you_ aren’t a spy?”

This was the opening she needed, bold though it was, but Sakura wasn’t sure how much to say. A moment of thought brought her to the safe route and she told a story of being ambushed in the night, of fleeing to draw the majority away while her friends held the others off. Of passing out and waking up to destruction and chakra exhaustion. Of realizing her friends had not returned, assumed KIA.

Rio’s face fell, and she took Sakura’s hand as her story went on, eyes sympathetic. Grip firm, she said a prayer for the girl’s lost comrades, begging a local kami to watch over their souls. Touched by her hand and her kindness, Sakura suddenly had to push back tears, throat tight. Again she was reminded of her shishou, of Tsunade’s gentler moments, and Shizune's gentle everything.

“I’m sorry to hear your story, though I think it is not the only one I will hear before this war is over. Damn the daimyos.” Rio released Sakura’s hand after another squeeze, and called for Bumi to bring them some fruit. The boys, who had apparently taken up the job of personal servants, had been quiet since Sakura started talking, and now rushed to fetch the food. “Well, you’re in luck, actually, because you’ve wandered much closer than you think. We’re about two days’ journey from Konoha, if you head East as the sun rises. I assume you’ll want to head out soon, since you have such heavy news. The patrols I've talked with certainly haven't had any time to delay.”

“Thank you,” Sakura said, taking some fruit from the boys. Rio’s comments were making her headache worse as she tried to figure out the words for what she wanted to know. “But, I was under the impression that, well, that Konoha had been attacked. Have you heard anything? Seen strange movement, people who don’t act correctly?”

“My girl, someone has fed you lies. Iwa, for all its allies, hasn’t managed to get through the Land of Fire to Konoha yet! Even with Ame and Kusa supporting them, the skirmishes have stayed within a day of the borders, though I have heard they’re trying to spearhead inward. People tell me things, you know.” Rio winked, but Sakura didn’t react. Everything she was saying was genuine from the woman, who seemed to have her faculties. Rio continue to speak, mentioning word of a battle that had come through a cousin, and the more she heard the more Sakura realized she knew that battle, those events. Iwa, Ame, Kusa… the Third Shinobi War matched blow-by-blow the story she was being told. Nearer to the end, surely, if Sakura was remembering her studies right. History had been a favorite subject of her bookish academy days. That had been decades ago, though; how could this town have missed word of its end? Much less, again, the calamity? She would play along and see where this took her, but maybe hanging around here too long _was_ a bad idea.

Sakura decided to stick to her original plan of visiting Konoha as soon as possible. That way she could still scavenge, locate their camp and caches, and then come back to this village more prepared to help fix… whatever problem it was they had.

“Well, thank you for that,” Sakura gently interrupted Rio, before continuing. “You are right that I would like to leave soon, but I was hoping to stay the evening; sleeping indoors would be nice for a change. I don’t have money with me, but I can trade labor. My primary training is as a medic-nin, so I can heal as well.” Ken and Bumi exclaimed at that, forgetting their hesitancy at interrupting their grandmother to ask rapid-fire questions. It seemed that their sister wanted to be a medic-nin, too. 

Rio seemed pleased with her offer, and nodded.

“Of course! I wouldn’t dream of letting a guest sleep outside when I have space to spare. We hold guest spaces in the main house, which you can use. In exchange for the food, please take a look at our Aiko-chan, she is pregnant and has been confined to bed rest for complications, though I'm afraid I'm the best doctor in the area, which isn't saying much. It would certainly be a help.”

“Of course. Thank you, Rio-sama.”

  
  


Later that afternoon, Sakura found herself in a fresh yukata and sandals, her battle-worn clothing having been taken to be laundered. Once more Sakura fretted over how open she was leaving herself, but figured she might as well gamble; her luck had always been better than her shishou. The soft fabric felt so good, and her skin was clean from the use of the guest bath, hair finally free of every trace of blood and pleasantly scented.

The mirror had shown a face she barely recognized. Her hair had grown out again to just brushing her shoulders, though it still had a forward-tilt, cut shorter in the back than the front. So much time in the sun had lightened the pink further to more of a blush than a rose, and the yin seal on her head was dark with chakra, larger than it had been before to the size of her thumb nail. Her face was thin, worrisomely so for a woman of 26, and her eyes seemed larger in that wan face. Sakura knew she had lost a lot of weight in their flight, they all had, but seeing herself like this drove home the severity. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that this village, with its sheltered civilians, had accepted her so easily, looking like she did? Ino would have been appalled.

Trying to smooth the worry lines from around her eyes, Sakura answered the knock at the guest room door to find one of the young women she had followed into town standing on the other side, hands clasped together demurely.

“Hello, Sakura-san. Rio-sama let me know you were going to take a look at Aiko-chan; I’m Miku. If you are ready, we can go over. I’ll be your guide while you’re in town, if you want to go somewhere after.” The girl smiled, the expression a mirror of Tenten’s. Sakura blinked hard, nodding mutely, and tried for a smile. Seeing new people seemed to be triggering old wounds, and she was already sick of the renewed feeling of grief.

Miku lead her to a home closer to the western side of town, and called out to the people inside as they exchanged their shoes for slippers. The place had a homey feel and smelled faintly of lavender incense, a favorite of Sakura’s. Aiko, heavily pregnant and beautiful, sat on a mountain of cushions near a tea set, surrounded like a queen on a plush throne. She greeted Miku and turned to Sakura.

“Hello, Sakura-sensei, thank you for coming to see me. Please take care of me.” Her bow was barely a nod, the discomfort clear on her face.

“Of course, it is good to meet you, Aiko-san. Rio-sama tells me that you’ve been having complications?” Sakura said politely, settling into seiza next to the girl. Miku busied herself with the tea set, and Sakura amused herself with the thought that she had had more tea today than in the last several months.

“Yes, this is my second pregnancy; I lost the first, which is not unusual in my family, but I have continued to have my monthlies, and have been increasingly weak and fatigued.” Aiko continued to list her symptoms, describing the loss of her first child, alarmingly far along, and talking of her husband, who was a shinobi apparently deployed in defense of Konoha. “He is so excited for a child, and I can’t let him come home to that again,” Aiko said tearfully. Sakura felt for the girl, even as she internally questioned where this husband was, in defense of a nation that didn’t exist. Things kept getting stranger.

“Well, Aiko-chan, let me see what I can do.” Sakura poured chakra into the air and her hands, manipulating the temperature and feel of it to help calm Aiko. She felt the heartbeat of the woman, the flow of her blood and body, and the smaller, fainter heartbeat of her child. In a trance, she traced the woman’s organs with energy, quickly discovering the deformity in the woman’s uterus and the reason for her bleeding. She would require major surgery, but Sakura had spent years in environments where that was not traditionally possible. With her own skill and developed methods, Aiko-chan should not lose her baby again.

Withdrawing, Sakura explained the problem, and the location of the baby. “It’s similar to an ectopic pregnancy, when the baby isn’t growing where it’s supposed to. That’s likely related to your previous miscarriage, but I think I can fix it. I will have to put you to sleep so you don’t move during the procedure, but in the end you should be fine. It’s actually very lucky we are doing this now, considering the position of the child.”

Tearfully, Aiko accepted, and sent Miku to get the necessary supplies. As Sakura explained it, she would be operating using chakra as a tool, so that she would not have to cut Aiko open from the outside, but it was good to be prepared for an emergency in case something went wrong and Sakura had to operate traditionally. Once the women were prepared, Miku holding Aiko’s hand, Sakura began.

A pulse of chakra to one of the small tenketsu on Aiko’s forehead and the woman slumped down, unconscious. Miku sucked in a breath but relaxed sheepishly at Sakura’s sharp look.

  
“I’m going to operate now; she won’t wake up until I wake her. Please don’t jostle me or her, and keep everyone and anyone out. Stopping too soon or moving when I shouldn’t could kill her or the baby,” Sakura told her sternly, and the girl paled, nodding.

“Yes, Sakura-sensei!”

  
  


Medicine and healing never failed to amaze Sakura. Seeing a small cut close, growing new tissue, or connecting to a person’s vitals to feel their heartbeat in her chakra; it all filled Sakura with a fierce joy. This was her element, and in some ways she’d surpassed her shishou. This was one of them.

Chakra scalpels usually acted as fine blades situated at a focus point on the body, which were good for cutting _into_ things. Sakura, in a stroke of brilliance, had devised a way to perform surgery by cutting _inside_ them.

Channeling her energy into the patient as one would for the mystical palm technique, the trick was to manipulate the chakra within the patient to form a blade using the patient’s own tissues as a source. This required several things to happen simultaneously, including transference of chakra to the patient, halting of bodily systems in that area, ‘filtering’ chakra from one type to another, and directing the blade using with only chakric sensing. It was markedly easier on shinobi, whose bodies were more used to channeling chakra, but Sakura was good. Really good.

Slowly she filtered her chakra through Aiko, feeling again her womb and the defect, wrapping the fetus and its organs in energy to shield it from jostling. A push and a sharpened blade cut through the area, separating the affected portions. Slowly Sakura cut, shaping and healing in turns until she had moved the connected tissue into a more natural area. After that, she turned her attention to the scarring on the girl’s cervix, shaving it down and re-healing so that new, flexible cells replaced the damage of her previous miscarriage.

Coming back to herself, Sakura slowly removed her chakra from the child, noting that _he_ seemed healthy and hale, and that Aiko’s vitals were strong. Opening her eyes, they stung with sweat, but before she could move to draw a hand across her face, Miko was pressing a soft towel into her hand.

  
“Are you finished? It’s been several hours and I was worried something might have happened! I was worried that I might have to do something if you didn’t come out of it!” the girl babbled, nervous. “Were you able to fix Aiko-chan? Is her baby okay?”

“Yes, I believe so, Miko-chan,” Sakura smiled, taking a long drink of the tea Miko offered and wiping her face. “I’m going to go ahead and wake Aiko-chan. I’ve got some instructions for the both of you for her care after today.”

Waking up the girl was easy, the opposite of what she had done before. A pulse of chakra stimulated her brain and nervous system, and the girl blinked rapidly at them both. Miko giggled.

The good news had Aiko crying. Sakura found herself soothing the woman with a hand on her hair, a smile on her own face. It had been a long time since she’d been able to do something so pure.

“Now, you should be fine, but for the next week I want you to continue your bed rest. After that, if you feel stronger, which you should, feel free to move around. You’ve still got plenty of pregnancy to go, and exercise is important for a healthy body and baby. Moving around right now, though, can easily undo my hard work, and put you at more risk. Healing like this is convenient but the flesh needs time to strengthen naturally. There was some other damage to your cervix from the miscarriage, which I took care of, so you may have some residual soreness in the area; _please_ practice your exercises to firm up those muscles, otherwise there will be consequences when the birth comes. There will also be some discharge within the next few days, since your body will get rid of the bits of tissue and blood from the procedure, but no bleeding more than light spotting. If it’s anything more than that, or you feel like you're having a period, you will need a medic right away.”

“Absolutely, thank you, Sakura-sensei! Please, what can I do to thank you?”

“Have a happy baby, Aiko-chan, and love him very much,” Sakura laughed, before realizing her mistake.

“Aiko-chan is having a boy!” Miko crowed, and hugged the other girl, who sat staring at Sakura.

“I apologize, Aiko-chan, I should have asked if you wanted to know first.”

“Sakura-sensei,” Aiko began, tears in her eyes, “thank you, _thank you_. My husband was hoping for a boy, oh I have such good news.” She grabbed Sakura’s hand and pressed it to her forehead, laughing a bit, and then wiped at her own tears. “Such good news.”

  
  


Later that evening Sakura managed to escape to the guest room, tired in many ways after her first day around people again. Surgery aside, a lot had happened and she had much to think about.

These people were definitely real; there was no reason for Kaguya to hold a farce of this magnitude, with so many unrelated parts, much less a woman with pregnancy complications. Sakura may or may not have tried to break genjutsu every few hours or so, just to make sure, but nothing had come of it. Which meant that these people _believed_ that they were still in the Third Shinobi War, verified by her conversations with Miko, Aiko, Rio, the boys, and a few others she had met in the course of the evening. Even separate they said the same thing, and short of full-on interrogating them, Sakura didn’t know how to proceed.

In the morning she would head to Konoha, and see if there was anything in the rubble or on the way that might tell why this town was left out of time.


	5. Letters

Leaving had been harder than she thought it would be.

An exhausting day had led to the best sleep she’d gotten in months, the traditional futon like a cloud after sleeping in fields, trees, and other uncomfortable hiding places. Miko, who was apparently Rio-sama’s helper, had delivered Sakura’s clothing at daybreak, along with a gifted yukata of sakura blossoms, sent from Aiko-chan with a note of thanks. It was a sturdy, thick cotton, the flowers in relief on a midnight-blue background, as if they were floating on a deep lake. She vowed to treasure it, a reminder that she was not alone any more.

Now here she was, headed east at a comfortable run, determined to make it to Konoha by late afternoon. In the beautiful spring sunshine she had decided to forgo her black top and instead wear her new yukata, the shirt and outer wrap shoved into her backpack, though she still wore the mesh armor underneath. Rio-sama and her family had been far too kind, resupplying her with what tools were available in a civilian town, including a refill for her brush and ink set, a blanket, new underclothes, and a frankly alarming amount of onigiri for the road. The boys had given her some letters with the request to drop them off at the gate to be delivered to their sister, Rin, and she had not had the heart to refuse them, or disabuse them of the notion that the letters would do any good. 

Stopping when her stomach growled, Sakura found a safe place in the tree line and judged the road. She had been through here on a few quick courier missions, back when Team Kakashi had been stuck in the mire of D-ranks. The road looked different, a little smaller and less used, though still defined. Sakura chalked it up to age and memory that it had taken her this long to recognize the area, though in general the trees looked much more intact than they had after the Konoha crush. She smiled wryly at the thought that at least the forest was being allowed to recover.

Munching down a few rice balls, she considered the letters she had been given. It wouldn’t do to keep them, so she would leave them where she had promised as a sick tribute. Her fingers itched to open them, but the trust from Ken and Bumi was enough to still her hands. This would be a _long_ day.

  
  


She neared the largest wall at around four o’clock, having pushed herself a little just for the exercise. For a civilian, even traveling at a good pace, two days had probably been a generous estimate, but she was a kunoichi. The look of the wall and the sounds in the distance made her pause, nearly tripping as she stopped suddenly to stare at the gated ring.

Konoha was the worst kept 'secret' in the Land of Fire, not so much a ‘hidden’ village as a very well defended one. Concentric rings had been constructed over the years, with inscribed seals and chakra batteries powering subtle genjutsu releases, and dulling elemental chakra within a radius. There were other effects, but they weren't widely known outside the sealing corps that dealt with their maintenance.

Manda’s giant body had ruined the largest ring - this one - far beyond repair, Katsuyu-hime and Jiraiya’s toads inadvertently finishing destruction of the trees and wall en masse. Then, with the attack by Pein and his paths, the subsequent attacks by Akatsuki’s remnants, and Kaguya herself… The walls should be nothing more than piles of stone.

It was perfect. The wall. It was intact. She could feel the faint hum of the chakra effects, the inner wall being the strongest. Stupefied, she slowly realized that the others she had passed were also active, though generally weaker. She hadn’t slowed down enough to pay much attention, but they had been there. The familiar surroundings had lulled her into a sense of complacency, but that was just it - everything was far too familiar and perfect. This should be changed. Different. What was happening!?

Again she pulsed her chakra at increasing levels, cutting her own arm with a chakra scalpel, below the line of her yukata. Nothing changed, not even a flicker. 

Wiping her arm off with a handful of grass and healing the cut, Sakura considered. Again Infinite Tsukuyomi was not an option, though that would be easier to believe than what she was seeing. Something had changed here; was it possible that holdouts had come back into the area to repair things? Did someone have some sort of localized regression jutsu, perhaps? After Pein's initial resurrection, that wasn't so unlikely.

As she thought, hands moving to reverently rest on the wall, Sakura’s heart raced. Against her better judgement, she considered the town she had left, and their talk of Konoha. She wasn’t sure what she thought yet, but excitement and anxiety drove her to move, faster now, toward the gate. She would find out soon.

She never noticed the eyes following her at a distance.

  
  
  
  


Her first reaction was nausea. Doubling over, Sakura gagged, leaning heavily on a tree, and pressed her fingernails into the rough bark to ground herself. The hammering in her heart and the roiling snakes in her stomach distracted her enough that she was able to eventually control her dry heaves, nothing left of her meager lunch. She focused on what she could feel, recognizing a panic attack in the making: the bile in her mouth and nose, the hot tears in her eyes and the blood in her face, the scratches on her palm and the rough, cool bark under it, the sun on her calf, the smell of drying sweat and fragrant detergent, and the noise of a city.

That. The noise.

She took her time, slowly standing and moving away from the sick, leaning back in the shade and deliberately avoiding looking at the source of sound to her left. The leaves on the tree were dappled with sunlight, and a bird’s nest hung on a branch above her, seemingly unoccupied.

The noise continued. The cry of children and the mix of voices matched the Konoha of her dreams. Every so often a raised voice would call out, or a child’s laughter would interrupt the hum. Even the cries of birds matched her memories, Konoha’s trees hosting distinctive varieties that were active in the spring afternoon, and the leaves rustled in the breeze, much like the grasslands days ago. A chime rolled out from the temple, counting the hour.

What was this? Why would someone do this to her? What could they gain? Frustrated at herself and the situation, Sakura brought her hands up to dig against her eyes, pressure making spots form in the darkness of her vision. She didn’t know if she could do this; even if… even if no one she knew had survived to come and… rebuild? There were so many ghosts behind those walls, and she didn’t even know if it was real, though her senses told her it was. What purpose did this serve? If it was real, then were those months out in the wilderness for nothing?

No… Kaguya… No. Not for nothing. It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t let it.

Several more minutes passed, and somehow she found her strength. Snorting at herself in some sick humor, she wondered what Naruto and Sasuke’s responses would have been to this situation. Or Shikamaru. Heck, even Kabuto would probably be handling this better than she was, and he hadn’t been the picture of stability when he defected to their group. That thought brought some wry comfort, and she allowed herself to finally look back at the sight that twisted her insides.

Everything was there. Everything. The gate, with its deceptively-innocent guardhouse, and the tall wooden fence that ringed the village. Two chunin, by their jackets, manned each side, the doors close. The huge symbol of the leaf village stood out, painted in conductive ink so that it glittered in the sunlight. Strange details stood out to her, from the redness of some of the roofs to the distant smell of barbecue on the wind. She thought she heard a wind chime. It was as if she had come home.

There were some differences, she noted, small but there, some buildings absent and others present, though at this angle she couldn’t see much. She would have to get closer to do any sort of reconnaissance. If it wasn’t so important, she would have already turned tail in her cowardice, but again the thought of her boys wouldn’t let her. She would treat it like a mission, then.

Going in low-brow would be best, she decided firmly, even if she was pretty famous (or had been, her mind whispered), it would be smart to assume that the people capable of _this_ were dangerous. Sakura jumped back and up into a natural seat within the branches, and retrieved a blank scroll and ink from her pack. Naruto and Tsurumi-chan had been much better at seal work than anyone else, but they had all learned early on, unable to do without. A basic storage seal took form, and when the last line was finished she considered her work before layering some chakra into the ink. It flashed, sinking into the paper and drying in an instant. A leaf broken from the branch was her test, and when she was able to deposit and retrieve the item she deemed it good enough. It probably wouldn’t last more than thirty uses or so, but for a quick fix it wasn’t bad at all.

All of her weapons stayed with her, except Sasuke’s sword, still without a scabbard and too obviously a shinobi weapon. Otherwise her extra pouches and items were all sealed away, the scroll itself slid into the free space along her hip. Mentally she thanked Aiko for the yukata, which made her seem much less threatening, and was also loose enough to hide her cargo.

One final check had her placing her hand on her hitai-ate consideringly. It would be a mistake to identify herself as a shinobi so readily. She carefully untied it from her head, the fabric creased and worn with age. Fluffing her hair, she smoothed it so that the seal on her forehead was at least partially covered. The forehead protector went inside the lip of her leggings, band tied around her stomach underneath her other clothing. Her nearly empty pack now only held her food, clothes, and blankets, to give the appearance of a messenger. Her backstory would be the task she had been appointed: charged with delivering letters for her friends’ sister. At least she hadn’t lied to Ken and Bumi.

She looped back out of sight, hoping that the chunin at the gate had been bored enough to miss her the first time. Kotetsu and Izumo had been famous for sleeping and playing cards in turns, and the times she had been on its rotation she had seen all of her friends and colleagues use it as structured free time. Choji even took up knitting. They had been spoiled.

Walking up now felt like walking to a funeral, and she forced herself to take deep breaths, her own chakra working to regulate her heartbeat. One side of the gate was labelled for civilians, the other unmarked but obviously a check-in point for ingoing and outgoing shinobi. As she approached the proper side, one of the chunin, a girl with mauve hair, unsubtly hip-checked her companion, a lounging brunette man who looked one minute away from drooling on the counter. Sakura had to hold her breath to keep calm, and instead waved with a torn smile.

“Hello and welcome to Konoha, what business do you have in the village today?” The woman greeted, shoving the man again when he slumped unprofessionally. He glared at her before focusing on Sakura, eyes intent. She tried not to sweat.

“I’m acting as a courier for a few friends, and was hoping to get into the village to do some shopping,” Sakura said calmly, pulling the letters out of her pack. “I’m afraid I haven’t been to Konoha before, so I’m not sure if I needed anything…”

“Are the letters civilian? And we can issue day visas, but considering it is wartime you won’t be able to stay in the city overnight without a citizen to sponsor you,” the woman continued. As she spoke the man busied himself with pulling out paperwork: forms for the day visa and receipts for the letters.

“Shinobi, actually. Nohara Rin is the recipient, if they can be delivered to her… And a day pass would be fine, since I-”

“Here. Fill these out.” The man said, interrupting. “Once you’ve got them done we’ll mark you with a seal and let you in. Return time is at sundown, no later than 7:30PM. If you are in the village past that time we will find and forcibly remove you. The seal will be removed here at the gate, do not attempt to tamper with it.”

Familiar with the paperwork, though irked by his unfriendliness, Sakura stepped aside to fill out the forms, and upon consideration left her name only as “Sakura.” Enough people went by mononyms that it shouldn’t raise any eyebrows, and if pressed, she would say she was an orphan. Handing back the materials and her letters, she surrendered her right hand to the woman, who carefully marked a small seal on the back, pricking Sakura’s pinkie with a lancet and placing a drop of blood in the center of the seal. Sakura couldn’t control her shiver when the woman pulsed her chakra to set and activate the seal.

The moment their energies touched, the woman stiffened, looking at her with narrowed eyes. The movement alone was enough to alert her colleague, who shifted back slightly to place his hand on his weapons pouch. No civilian would notice, but Sakura was no civilian. The flicker of her eyes to his hand alerted the woman in turn. Her wrist was gripped more firmly, and Sakura’s stomach dropped into her feet.

“What did you say you were here for again?” The woman said slowly, pressing her chakra out closer to Sakura’s. Earlier it hadn’t been enough for her to get a true sense, but Sakura knew then that she had felt the ease with which her chakra moved, and her mind raced.

“Uh, just delivering the letters. And shopping. Why? Did I write something wrong?” Sakura knew the excuse was weak, and it didn’t stop the man from reaching out his chakra as well. His breath hissed when he encountered her reserves, roiling with her nervousness, and the woman jerked her hand back to pull Sakura closer. Busted. Maybe she shouldn’t have banked on their carelessness.

Pulsing the chakra in her hand, she used her enhanced strength to rip it out of the woman’s grip, pulling her half out the window. The man cursed, hopping after her as she leaped thirty feet to the tree line, ducking behind a trunk as she began moving.

“Sorry, I think I left the stove on!” Sakura called back in the form of her old sensei, a short laugh escaping hysterically as a kunai flew past her and embedded itself in the tree. Shouting followed her, and another kunai hit the bark which exploded in little bits past her. That had been a chakra-enhanced throw. They really weren't messing around, though she supposed she had earned it by acting so terribly. It was apparently wartime, after all, and it wasn’t a hard leap to assume that she was a spy. Subterfuge had never been her forte, especially since she had become famous in the bingo books and ditched that type of training for her medical career.

Speed was her friend, now, and with the seal hot on her hand she didn’t dare go closer to the city. Her enhanced strength let her leap like a cat, soaring over tree tops in great sections. The signatures of the pursuing shinobi dwindled in the distance, until she felt it was safe to stop and remove the tracker. The seal was as big as a walnut, black and glossy against her skin. With more time Sakura could get out her gear and remove it naturally, but there was no time. This would hurt.

  
Forming a chakra scalpel with her left hand, she sliced clean through the skin on her right, neatly cutting through the dermis and shaving off the layers the seal was burned into. More complex seals were impossible to remove this way without removing the limb entirely, since they would burn themselves deeper as they were removed, like acid through stone. This one was low powered and dulled enough that anyone and everyone could be trained to make the seal, hence why it was used at the gate, with the ever-changing guard rotation; no seal master was required.

Deed done, Sakura took a second to check that she hadn’t missed anything, before flooding her hand with healing chakra. The skin knit back together, and she stretched her hand wide several times to get the blood flowing through the new tissue. The dermis would be weak for a bit, but otherwise fine.

Holding the scrap of skin, Sakura had an idea. Off to the south, there was an offshoot of the Naka river that circled into the Forest of Death, angled toward and then away from the village. Tearing off a piece of light tree bark, Sakura stuck the skin to the bark with a flare of chakra, the blood gluing it to the wood. She shot off to the river and deposited it into the quick-moving water, rinsing her hands and arms while she was at it. The river was cool and flowing at a good pace thanks to the spring melt. If she was right, the gate guards would have sent word for a tracker tuned to the seal. She would be long gone by the time they found her ruse.

Turning back, she oriented herself and thought about camp. It was clear that she wouldn’t be able to get into Konoha, and doing reconnaissance now was not an option. She felt strangely devoid of emotion but didn’t allow herself to dwell on what was definitely an impending breakdown. Sage, she had been stupid! If she had just taken some time to do recon and calm down... Dammit!

  
Like a child, she let out a frustrated roar and threw a punch at the tree next to her, bark exploding into thousands of splinters. So. Stupid!

Well. Camp. Another goal was what she needed. If she headed slightly south and then back west she would make it to the camp she had escaped so many days ago. It seemed like weeks, now, since Kamui, but there were supplies there that she now desperately needed, and hopefully a start for some answers. There was a cache in between here and the camp, too, which she could pick up as she traveled.

Huffing, Sakura leapt over the water and into the trees. She would never let herself live this down.


	6. Cache

Screaming at the sky had never solved anything, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.

After two hours of running, dodging, and covering her trail, Sakura had felt safe enough to double back over to the cache of supplies they had hidden. This was one that she and Shikamaru had placed, one that even held a few Kamui Gate Seals for emergencies. This was certainly an emergency. The cache was fairly close, and it had been easy enough to find the area once she had her bearings, but that was where her luck left her again.

Because she couldn’t fucking find it.

Their caches had taken the form of seals inked in specially resistant paints onto innocuous surroundings - the bottom of a large rock, for instance, or the under-hang of a cave wall. Late into the evening she looked, searching around the small cave they had used for this one, flinging stones and grass out of the way and questioning every bit of sanity she possessed. It wasn’t until night fell that she gave up, sitting down hard on the ground and yelling her frustration into the air.

NOTHING MADE SENSE. Nothing was where she had left it, there were _living people_ who weren’t Zetsu in disguise, her friends were dead, and she was going crazy. Throwing a tantrum like a child, Sakura ripped up grass and pounded the dirt with her fists, chakra enhanced strength causing shock waves through the ground. There were a few small grass stains on her new yukata - and let’s face it, that was the only physical thing she had to keep her sane. Seeing the stains brought a new level to her fury, and striding purposefully over to a sizable tree, she ripped it out of the ground and threw it as far as she could in the opposite direction.

It really didn’t make her feel tired, but the sight of the flying tree and the crashing sounds it made, birds fleeing everywhere, was enough to break her fury and leaving her feeling empty once again. She was near catatonic immediately, emotions washed out, only slightly better than after she found Sasuke’s chokutō, and she didn’t want that. There was enough psychology and mental health knowledge left in her head to realize _that_ wasn’t the answer.

Considering her options, she decided to head for their camp. That was her last opportunity, last refuge, and anything else would have to wait - even the idea that had slowly been forming ever since she saw that little village.

  
  
  


Nope. Nope. Nope. She couldn’t do it. Pacing outside the boundary to their camp, she couldn’t bring herself to accept what she logically knew. Another few hours of running had kept the thoughts from invading her mind, but they were still there, no matter how much she wanted them to _go away_. Now that she was here, she couldn’t keep them out either. They weren’t there. The camp wouldn’t be there. What did that mean?

Losing this would be losing a part of her identity. That camp had been home in a time when home didn’t technically exist, apart from the people you were with. And they were all apart forever. Shikamaru. _Lee_. Her boys, Naruto and Sasuke, those idiots. Their other friends and survivors… Heck, even Kabuto, the asshole-turned-compatriot.

Sakura forced herself to come to a stop and face the tree line. There was a small clearing she was currently standing in, but a large rock marked the direction of the camp. It was nestled in a bit of a natural river bed that had dried up; they had extended it and encouraged the growth of new foliage to cover the area, using downed trees to add a natural shelter. The whole place was virtually undetectable, and much roomier than it seemed from afar.

Something drove her forward - maybe the ghosts she kept recalling - and she broke the treeline, looking for their space.

It was a river.

A river.

A _River_.

Real, flowing water. Cold. She knew because she walked into it. Wet. If it didn’t mean getting her yukata wet, she would have sat down. All of this confirmed the rising suspicion she had been denying: time travel.

If the place had been different, she would have blamed Kamui for dropping her in a different area. But everything was so familiar - because she _would_ be here in the future. Her childhood home looked wrong because some buildings hadn’t been built yet. Old things were vibrant and new. The people looked good because war had not touched them in that way. The land was unscarred because no one had done the scarring.

The unbidden thought that she had abandoned her friends, eyes stabbed out and dead _in the past_ , made her bend to gag again, though her breakfast was already on the ground outside Konoha. _Konoha._ She had nearly invaded her own city. Laughing while vomiting bile wasn’t the easiest thing, but it was grounding.

Rinsing her mouth in the clean water, Sakura considered. She wasn’t crazy. Maybe… Kamui? There had been moments where everyone had discussed the capabilities of such a space, Sasuke’s use of the pocket dimension such a staple of their ability to survive Kaguya. And he hadn’t even understood it the same way he understood his native Mangekyō Sharingan. Receiving an eye, as he did with Kakashi, who received his from Obito, didn’t grant him the inborn knowledge of that power, and only experimentation and the knowledge of past battles let him use it with any reliability.

Shikamaru, bless his genius, had theorized that they could travel in more than space, especially after entering and exiting the pocket dimension with the tags, but other things had occurred that took their attention from the idea. Sakura thought of it now, and laughed hysterically. It seemed she had discovered a way without even trying.

The chill of the water and her returning senses forced Sakura to set up her own camp. She settled against a tree, nestled in the roots, and shucked off her wet shoes to dry, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. She’d had trench foot before, and it wasn’t pleasant.

The calm of the night let her think, and think she did. Time passed, Sakura considering what she knew of the general era she seemed to be locked in, and what things had not yet come to pass. The terrifying thought that she would be forced to relive the wars made her pause, but she firmly tamped that down. She was here, and she would do what she could to make sure no one knew what she had gone through. Nothing else was hers to control.

It was that thought which led her into dreams of the past.

  
  
  


Lee was shaking her. There was fire, by the smell, maybe a katon jutsu, and he was just shaking her. No noise was coming out. She felt deaf but wasn’t alarmed.

He grabbed her hand, pulling her up, but she immediately remembered she was pregnant and resisted. He ran, mouthing words she couldn’t understand, and only after he dropped did she realize he was saying goodbye.

Then, Shikamaru was carrying her, he had been all along, and she knew that she was split open but didn’t care - where was her baby? Her baby…

Naruto and Sasuke were ahead of her, walking casually, and Shikamaru passed them. Sakura looked over his shoulder to see their eyes were gone, stabbed out and empty.

Dread filled her, her gut twisting, and looking up into the face of Shikamaru, she realized his eyes were gone, too.

She finally screamed.


	7. Tracking

Jiraiya normally liked looking at pretty girls, but this one was suspicious.

Three days ago he had stopped at the Sixth Outpost to dispense information and retrieve a group of injured genin as he returned home from the front. He had been on a shorter rotation this time, and had volunteered to make a solo run while his teammates handled the direct route with the main body of their forces. Two major victories in a week - and much of that due to his own student, he noted smugly - had put them all in a good mood, though tensions were still high. It had been five years of war, after all, and while there was a rhythm to their lives it wasn't a safe one.

Their group had rendezvoused with a patrol going along the main road, which had been alerted by the barrier forces. Apparently there was a lone shinobi traveling at speed toward the village, though they hadn't made any attempt to hide themselves.

"I see," Jiraiya said, considering. He looked back at the troop of genin with him, all of whom were panting and looking much worse for wear. They certainly weren't conditioned for the type of travel he had put them through, in an effort to evade enemy eyes. "Well, I can take over your objective, if you will help them home." Here he pointed to three boys in particular, all braced against trees. Sage, they seemed young. "Those three have leg injuries and I can't carry them all. If you'll take everyone to get checked in and healed up, I'll take after this shinobi and then report to the Hokage."

The lead of the home team, a young chunin he recognized as the Hokage's own son, Asuma, nodded seriously after some thought. What a cute kid. "Yes, Jiraiya-sama, we will watch over them."

Jiraiya waited long enough for them to load up the worst of the injured and head back toward Konoha, before wiping his hand over his eyes. He was tired, but that was more a symptom of life than anything in particular, these days. In an effort to finish fast, he sped out in an arc, heading for the gap in the second ring. Given the time frame Asuma had told him, the shinobi should be crossing there, soon.

'Really,' he thought to himself, 'there should be two patrols out here, instead of at-need. The old man must be scraped thin to send out new chunin for a threat assessment. Then again,' he dodged a loose tree limb, 'we did just send a platoon out toward the western front. And the first and fourth are still active...' 

It was then, musing over Sarutobi-sensei's recent battle strategies, that he felt the chakra presence. Jiraiya stopped, performing a short jutsu that camouflaged his hair in with the leaves and wildlife around him. It was a little more advanced than a henge, using partial sage arts to bend the nature chakra around him. He wouldn't be noticed, this way, unless this mystery shinobi was looking for him. Clocking their speed, he fell in parallel, though slightly behind, and worked to get eyes on this person. Pink was the first thing he noticed. Not many people had pink hair, after all.

She was running like a shinobi, though she was dressed more like a village civilian; the sandals told him she didn't live in an outlying settlement. Most places still preferred the more traditional footwear. He considered her dress, noting places it seemed likely she would have weapons, apart from the obvious sword, and trying to get a read for her chakra. She had a lot of it, that was for certain, but there was a duplicity to it that he wasn't able to pin down...

Jiraiya decided to tail her, but vowed to intercept her if she seemed like she was going to jump the gate. It also, he grinned gleefully, gave him more time to enjoy the way her ass looked as the wind puffed her yukata up behind her. She was shapely, from what he could tell, and with Tsunade as a teammate he'd developed a bit of a fetish for strong women - this girl's arms and legs would have him trying out pick-up lines, if he'd seen her casually.

His mood soured a bit as she stopped next to the largest barrier ring, confused at her demeanor as she placed a palm against it and breathed deeply. He could tell she wasn't tampering with things, but she seemed... panicked? Maybe? Jiraiya decided he was correct when shortly after she had a vomiting breakdown next to a tree. Concerned, he did note that she had picked a very strategic cover - within sight of the gate but hidden by the angle of the tree line. He would have to say something - maybe they could prune some of that back?

When she jumped into the tree and started creating a seal, Jiraiya really didn't know what to think. "What are you up to, girl?" he murmured to himself, considering warning the gate attendants. No, he wanted to see what she'd do, especially since she seemed to have disarmed herself. 'Sensei is going to get me for this, I know it,' he thought wryly, adjusting his position again. Luckily, she seemed focused on the gate, and he was surprised when she tried to enter the civilian way. 'She must not know about the barriers, then. I guess Asuma forgot to notify the gate when they left; they must have sent them out in a hurry. Is she a messenger from another village? No, they would have sent a hawk ahead... Though she did have a headband...'

Jiraiya had a little hope that things would go well - she did have an amazing ass - and then he could check her story with the guard after she was let in. Of course, that didn't happen. One moment she was filling out a form, and the next she was hauling around the female gate chunin, jumping straight over Jiraiya's head and away from the village. "Shit!" he cursed, and threw a chakra-enhanced kunai toward her. Leaping up, he dropped his transformation and signaled the pursuing chunin with a command code, and they retreated back toward their post. He sent an earth clone after her and leapt back to the chunin, who were one step away from a yelled argument, by the looks of them.

"Report."

"Jiraiya-sama!" They said in unison, giving a half bow. "She approached with letters for a Nohara Rin, shinobi, and requested a day pass to shop. Chakra contact caused her to react, and flee. Calls herself 'Sakura'."

"She does have standard tracker on, sir. We got that far before she spooked," the man added, nervously avoiding Jiraiya's gaze. If this hadn't been such a serious situation, Jiraiya would have clapped in glee that his reputation was so fierce. "Should we send for a tracker?"

"No," Jiraiya cut him off, making eye contact with each. "I'll track it, you two hold the gate and send a message to get a squad out here to secure the road."

'Back into the fucking trees,' Jiraiya cursed, 'and now it'll be dark before I get to report and relax in the springs.' He grinned. 'Unless I catch her first!'

Hours later and Jiraiya had to admit he'd been beat.

'It's the pink. Nobody who has pink hair should be this way.' He grouched to himself, considering again the wet slice of skin and bark in his hand which he'd fished from an embankment. 'Pink-haired women should be serving tea or some shit, not cutting pieces off and running like a ghost from the shinigami.'

He'd followed the path of his earth clone, until he realized the distance had actually caused the clone to disperse before it had caught her. Kicking the pile of earth petulantly, he had resorted to tracking the seal, which put him behind when he had to quick-sketch the matrix. Really he should start carrying a copy. And now all he had to show for his efforts was soggy gore.

'I've never seen anyone circumvent it like this.' He considered the corresponding place that had been cut off on his own hand, tracing a patch from the web between his thumb and pointer finger in a circle on the back. 'This had to hurt like a bitch. Likely some medical skill? She didn't seem so desperate, did she?' Rolling his shoulders, he leaned his head back, staring up into the evening sky, before he bellowed out a loud laugh, a giddy sensation rising up in him at the failed challenge. Nobody had been directly hurt, or compromised, and he enjoyed a challenge to his skill, as strange as this one was.

"You got me this time, Sakura! You'd better watch out for the Great Toad Sage!"


	8. Chapter 8

'At least my nightmares are consistent,' Sakura thought dryly, blinking away the image of eye sockets and ash on the air, and rolled on her side in a full-body stretch.

It had been weeks since she had made peace with the realization that she was in the past, and while she hadn't been idle, she was _stuck_. The stress of being chased by Kaguya and the Zetsu was gone, instead replaced with the less-but-still-very-high stress of being an unaligned shinobi during wartime. She dared not circle back to the tiny village and the Noharas, in case Konoha sent a tracker once the letters were opened and the source realized. However, that meant that she had no one familiar or available to her for shelter. She certainly couldn't - and wouldn't - apply for citizenship in another country, especially considering there was no shinobi alliance as of yet. She wouldn't betray her home.

Sakura had drifted, noting that landmarks had changed with time: one settlement she tried simply wasn't extant yet, another was an active outpost, and the third she checked had been smaller than it would be, but just right for her purposes. It was a civilian town on the secondary road toward the capital, with enough foot traffic that blending in wasn't difficult. She'd spent several days resting at an inn and trying to make plans, gathering what information she could, but it was high time to move out before she attracted trouble. She was kunoichi - not something she could really turn off, not like Ino could - and she had a burning need to do _something_.

Fisting her hands in her hair, Sakura turned over to screech into the fabric of her pillow. She'd been wrestling with the idea of aiding the war effort, but the fact of the matter was that it had been years since she'd looked at any of that information, and she hadn't memorized it anyway. She'd focused on some famous battles and the jutsu that won them, but being a historian had been her mother's passion, not hers. From what she had gathered, the war still had a few years to go, and while several great battles had come and gone, she wasn't really sure how the war had ended. The peace treaties that the Kages had signed were cloaked in a lot of suspicion and mystery, she remembered, and there was a lot of ANBU involvement suspected with the way things had just... stopped. The official story was that Iwa had capitulated due to the large losses the Yondaime had dealt them, and Kumo and Ame had followed after the front turned and Hanzo the Salamander had mysteriously died, the Sannin implicated in their celebrity for his defeat in the second war.

She had been circling the decision to go toward the front and try to blend in with Leaf shinobi, but no matter what she wanted, that was a dumb plan. Her codes and knowledge were out of date in the wrong direction, and technically she had only been a chunin when the village was destroyed the first time and people stopped caring about that sort of thing. She surely knew more than she should have because of her apprenticeship, but there was a lot of induction and training for jounin she simply hadn't received. A commander at the front would see through her even more easily than the gate guards had.

The thought to fess up and tell all was there, but that was surely a terrible idea. Danzo was still lurking about, after all, and to be honest she didn't trust the Sandaime enough to reveal everything she knew. There were secrets she had that could accelerate the plans of Orochimaru, Akatsuki, Madara and the black Zetsu... Fuck. That was it. She had to investigate.

Creeping after Madara and Akatsuki weren't her ideas of a good time, but if she was going to come up with any sort of long-term plan, that was the key. Originally, they knew the group had operated around Ame, so that would be her first stop. Sage, she wished she could sit down and make a list, but she didn't trust herself to guard the information.

A triangle of light from the window hit Sakura in the face, and she squinted her eyes to glare back. She'd been staring at the ceiling in thought so long she'd missed breakfast and nearly lunch. Heaving herself up with a groan - training in the woods the day before had been grueling - she shuffled to the bathroom. Thirty minutes and some fresh clothes later, Sakura was sucking down yakitori as she walked over the main road and to the northeast. Her wallet was still thick from the lech she had pick-pocketed her first day in town, after she'd been approached and nearly groped. Hanging off his arm for a few seconds had been worth the room and food. She splurged a bit on a few sweet buns at a bakery near the exit, chuckling to herself as she thought of the look on his face when she'd kneed him in the groin. Life could be good sometimes, and it had been years since she'd had the pleasure of knocking somebody down a peg like that. Sweets in hand, she leapt into the trees.

The woods of fire country felt a bit more welcoming this time around, though she definitely had to avoid more and more shinobi as she approached the border. Cloaking her chakra by pulling everything into the space behind her yin seal, she pulled a black hood she'd sewn from a spare shirt over her head to conceal her hair, tucking the extra into the matching cloak she'd bought. It wouldn't do for anyone to connect her to that shit attempt to enter Konohagakure, and her gifted yukata was too precious and eye-catching to wear on a mission. Nearing the major outpost along the border - the seventh, she thought - was nerve-wracking, and she nearly jumped past the branch she was aiming for when the plume of a katon jutsu supplemented with a futon wave rolled above the tree line. Suddenly, there was fighting, and the sounds of weapons clashing and low shouts of jutsu. Increasing noise let her know this wasn't a small skirmish, and for a second Sakura stopped, facing past to the border, uncertain. Should she help? What if she could save someone? After existing in a world with so few people, every life was important, and she... Dammit, she had to. She would.

Exasperated with herself yet excited, a grin came over her face, and with a yelled "Shannaro!" she leapt over the tree line. Pulling chakra into her feet, she fell fast and hard, interrupting the battle with a boom of impact. A few smaller trees fell back from the small crater she made, the domino effect of their falling limbs forcing several shinobi to disengage. Immediately she was the center of attention, and Sakura realized she didn't have her hitai-ate on. Shit. "Long live Konoha!" she shouted, flustered, and pivoted on her heel to jab an Ame kunoichi in the face, hitting her lower back as the other woman blocked and spun to the side. The crunch of her lumbar vertebrae and the way she slumped to the ground let Sakura know she'd likely paralyzed her. That seemed to be enough for the Leaf shinobi, and the battle continued, though she was certainly being watched.

Two more Ame nin came to avenge their comrade, sweeping in a pincer movement with a length of wire taut between them. She jumped toward it, pulling her chokutō up to cut the wire and rolling to stab the one on the left in the leg. He dropped, though the blow was only glancing, and the second formed a water bullet to harry her away. She dodged, lashing out as an Iwa shinobi burst from the ground near her in a shower of dirt. On reflex she stabbed forward, punching right through his sternum, and stomped hard, roiling the dirt around her. A second Iwa shinobi was caught in her shock wave, screaming muffled from below as he managed to work a hand out of the crushed dirt. She stepped again and the hand stopped moving.

She had secured that attention now, and the others were adapting as the battle went on. Several Leaf shinobi - genin, by their sizes - hung back in the trees and threw projectiles to encourage enemies back into her range. It had caught on pretty fast that arms-reach was deadly with her, and she'd killed enough with the sword to prove that she was equally competent with kenjutsu. She was actually out of practice, to her shame, several parries and lunges not quite up to the standard she had maintained before her original sword had been destroyed over a year ago.

Finally, there was a small break in the fighting, the Iwa shinobi retreating and the Ame stepping back to regroup as well. The duality of the battle gave her pause, and there was some memory tickling at her brain. There weren't many times when forces had paired like this. What was she missing?

A leaf jounin called out to her, and she slid the sword back into the sheath under her cloak, holding up empty hands. 

"Yeah, that doesn't mean anything - we're all weapons here," he lazily drifted forward, before chucking a canteen at her. She checked it just like every drink, and then nearly drained it. By the sky, it had been hours. "Thanks for the assist. We appreciate you not joining up with the dirt brains." He sidled even closer, eyes searching her face, and belatedly Sakura realized he was a Nara. The coloring and facial shape was unmistakable, let alone the intense, hooded eyes. He throat felt tight as she wondered how he was related to Shikamaru.

"No problem," she sighed, handing back his canteen. "Anything for the leaf." Her gaze turned to consider the direction the opposing forces had gone, and from the corner of her eye the Nara flicked a few hand signs at another jounin, who cloaked himself and set off to scout. Some of the genin that had been helping her were combing the area, liberating thrown weapons and checking bodies. She couldn't help the smug giddiness that welled up when she noticed most of them were her kills. Serve them right.

"Be nice to put a name to our savior," the other chimed in, after it was clear she'd say no more. "I'm Yami, Nara Yami."

"Sakura." She started to step back, ready to make her escape before the Nara could pry anything else from her - plus she still had a sweet bun in her pack and a snack sounded really fucking good, if she could wash her hands first. Before she left, though, a call for a medic made her hurry forward before her mind caught up to her actions. The Nara shadowed her, Yami clearly having dubbed himself her watcher while she was with them. At least she wouldn't be accidentally stabbed - it would be on purpose while she was shadow bound.

The injured chunin was slumped painfully against a large root, hands holding his guts in. The kunai that was still sticking out of his side had been pulled across his stomach and possibly lodged in a rib before the assailant could rip it out. The body a genin was dragging away indicated the other man hadn't made it far. 'Good for him.'

Without thought Sakura knelt over him, hands reaching to assess. She froze as the tip of a kunai rested along the side of her neck, and a different voice, harsh but young, called out.

"Don't touch him!" the kid snarled, and the fear in him was obvious. "He's hurt, you'll hurt him!"

"I'm a medic," Sakura enunciated, speaking slowly and clearly. She turned her head slightly, not minding the small cut it gave her, to look the kid in the eye. "I'm going to help him, you have my word. But you have to trust me. He won't last long without help." Her eyes flicked to Yami, who was watching closely, a different chunin having joined him. The face of the newcomer tickled at her memory, but she ignored it in favor of the situation. "Do you have a medic here?"

"No," Yami called back, eyes grave, "he was killed two days ago and we haven't received reinforcements. All we have is basic triage."

"See," Sakura said, "I'm his best hope. Let me help him."

The hurt boy let out a hoarse whine that raised the hair on their arms, and his panting picked up. "It hurts-" And suddenly the knife was gone from her neck. Sakura didn't waste any more time sparing feelings, leaning in toward the boy and knocking him out just as she had done to Aiko-chan weeks ago. A flash of fire chakra sterilized her hands, before she laid one on the stomach wound and gripped the knife with the other. Her diagnostic wasn't good - the intestine had been pierced, though it seemed that the way he had fallen had kept things largely pinched closed. The knife was indeed lodged in his costal cartilage around the 8th rib, having come upwards at an angle. She grit her teeth as she focused on the organs first, going for speed rather than finesse. He'd already been bleeding long enough that it would be touch and go. 

Once she was satisfied things were closed on the inside, she turned to the men around her. "Hold him down. He likely won't wake, but I've got to get the knife out and don't want him jerking the wrong way if it wakes him up." They jumped in to do as she asked, and with a wince she jiggled the knife free of the cartilage, jamming it into the dirt beside her. Luckily there didn't seem to be any poison, though a soldier pill would be needed to kill any infection, since this wasn't exactly sanitary. The rest of the healing went much faster, skeletal and integumentary work being her specialty, though he would feel sore for a few days after.

Rocking back on her heals, she used her forearm to wipe her face and smiled at the kid who'd taken up beside her, still holding his friend's legs.

"You can let go. He'll be okay," she grinned, eyes flicking to the small crowd of leaf shinobi that had amassed. Nearly a full squadron, though none of them seemed as injured. If what the Nara had said was any indication, they likely hadn't had medical help in days. She tilted her torso so it was clear she was addressing them all. "He shouldn't walk back to your base - give him a few days to rest and let the healing set in his body, or he'll tear something I've just fixed. Otherwise have him take a soldier pill when he wakes, and drink a lot of water. He'll need food, too, to replace the blood he's lost, though don't force him to eat if it's uncomfortable. If he develops a fever, he'll need another pill and a hospital. If anyone else has injuries, speak now."

She slowly stood, watching them murmur amongst themselves. Slowly a tall kunoichi and a man who was possibly her brother came forward, pointing out injuries. Sakura made quick work of the flesh wounds, and soon was greeted by every shinobi in the squad, comments about her techniques and kenjutsu making her relax into the familiar feeling of a battle won. The whole time, Yami watched her.

Eventually there was nothing left to fix, and Sakura decided it was time she leave. She wanted to make it to Ame by morning, and while she hadn't used much chakra, the day of travel and fighting was tiring.

"You're leaving," Yami murmured to her, and she shook her head. Wasn't it just like a Nara to make statements, not questions. "Thank you for your help." He surveyed his squad, and then fixed her with a serious gaze. "Sakura. I do not know why you helped us, but I can say for sure that we would have lost this squad were it not for you." He looked a little pained to admit it, but the honesty gave Sakura pause. "If I can ever help you, I am in your debt. If you need anything that is within my power and does not harm Konoha, please call on me." From a pocket on his flak jacket, he pulled a steel tag marked with his name, shinobi ID, and clan symbol. Pressing it into her hand, he gave her a nod and then went to command his group. From pride of place next to his recovering friend, the kid who had pulled a knife on her gave a stiff salute, even cracking a smile as he then bowed low. A few others in the squad noticed and did the same, the rest busy in battlefield cleanup.

With a lighter heart, Sakura left once again.


End file.
